VICKI HUSBAND’S first degree was in Fine Art before she trained as an Occupational Therapist; she now works for the NHS.In 2010 she gained a Masters degree in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow. Vicki’s poems have been included in an anthology of new Scottish poetry Be The First To Like This, and have won prizes in theMslexia poetry competition, the Edwin Morgan International poetry prizeand The Pighog / Poetry School pamphlet prize.In 2015 Vicki took part in a project run by Highlight Arts collaborating with poets from Pakistan. This culminated in A Change in the Light, published by Sang-e-Meel press and launched at the Lahore Literature Festival 2016. This Far Back Everything Shimmers, Vicki’s first collection of poetry, is published by Vagabond Voices.

Bird tongues

in a wood panelled back room drawers are lined with bird skins: a neat flock filed in rows of holotype, wings folded flat, feet tied with string, labelled, eyes stitched shut. But two beaks left ajar

so bird tongues wag

tell tales of blossom that smelt like rotten meat, insects that fought back or weighed them down dangerously low, winds seeded with gunshot, birds disappearing into flower heads

swallowed whole like a song

A long held view

At the last moment it hesitates/ or rather we do/ to brace a small part of ourselves which still believes in certainty/ suspend a long held view of skylines that dates back to the longevity of hills/ anticipating foundations being rocked we rush to shock-absorb the soul/ and when the razing starts it’s thankfully slow/ as if to let us down gently/ first air warm as eggs casts its heat/ rooms release their light/ the shell creaks a little before sky rivers in/ a cloud of dust mush- rooms up like proving dough/ concrete gives a grunt then the whole falters/ apologetic almost before sauntering apart/ pictures of pop stars & dogs & green ladies jump their frames/ calendars slip from pins loosing a hive of empty boxes/ ceiling roses impress into laminate boards weighted by twenty floors flat- packing themselves walls de- fenestrating doors slammed thin and a rain of nails prised free from soft beds makes sweet timpani with concrete slabs and all the iron knitting unravels like storeys like storeys like stories

Desire paths Ad astra per aspera

As town planners will tell you the way the heart takes you won’t be on road won’t be on pavement or well lit or even signposted. More likely for it to wear a shy track, flattening stems of spring grass to a darker, muddied green, clipping a corner of a verge, jay-walking across places that don’t have a name: nettled ground moating a nail house shuttered by day, a gap through fly-tipped debris, balding weeds that hold up a wall shark-finned with glass then under a strip of trees no-one bothers to own. Eventually all ways converge on the edge of town, where land stretches to wide horizon, where every desire path reaches for its vanishing point before heading off to shortcut a rumoured route between the stars.

NB. ‘Bird Tongues’ was originally published in Northwords Now, Issue 27, 2014.